The Day The Temple Fell
by Dac13
Summary: One clone's personal experience of the horrors that occured during Order 66 and the battle of the Temple. There is Ahsoka in this so dont get confused.


When the order was given, no-one knew what to expect afterwards. I certainly didn't expect the silence...the

sheer body of nothing surrounding the ruined temple. Even Coruscant seemed be distant and muffled by the

eerie stillness of the ruins. The fear, disbelief and hatred in their eyes before they died would haunt me 'till I

died. As I stepped around my more than silent brethren, the world seemed not of my own. My rifle hanging

loosely in one hand, I felt disconnected. The bodies of the dead Jedi- padawans, knights and masters alike

littered the floor like tossed leaves. The same for my brothers, though I didn't feel much remorse for them as I

should have. As a captain of the 501st it was my duty and honor to fight for the Republic and all it stood for, to

protect my brothers at all costs. But...when the bottom line came down to it, we were fighting for ourselves and

our brothers only. The posters saying we were the last hope for the mighty Republic, saying we were glorious

heroes fighting for liberty...it meant absolutely nothing on the battlefield. When we received the order, I

remember it like it was yesterday. We had been cleaning our blasters and rifles from our most recent 'excursion'

from Mustapha or some planet like that, we were exhausted and battle scarred. Otherwise we were as relaxed

as we had ever been since we were cloned-the war was coming to a close and everyone knew it. The occasional

rumor of 'what will happen to us, the cannon fodder, when the war ends?' still floated around the barracks. I

and the other captains dismissed it immediately, saying we had one duty to fulfill and worry about and that was

the protection of the Republic and all its interests. The only problem was...we doubted it ourselves. And what

good is a rally cry if the shouters don't even believe what the hell they're shouting? Absolutely nothing when it

came down to it... Anyway, when we dropped into the temple from the gunship, if you were a clone, you could

hear your brother's jaws clench, the blasters tremble minutely. The one thing that kept them from taking off was

the Order. Order 66 was infamous from the second we saw the blue hologram in our huds and armor displays,

telling us the Jedi had attempted a coup and were to be terminated on sight... that included the younglings. The

order went against just about everything we held, save for the unmentionables, but it instilled an unbreakable

need for obedience. We _couldn't_ disobey...it was like we had recited it from birth. With the myriad tests the

damn cloners put us through I wouldn't be in the least surprised. When we got the order to go ahead, we

moved swiftly and silently through the front doors and regarded the padawans wandering the halls with cold

and heartless precision. They watched us curiously, and then in slight fear...they felt terror when one of us fired

first. The rest came in waves of blue, once friendly, now an unshakable death sentence upon them. We had

been their troopers, their slaves, their comrades and friends...and now we were killing them by the dozens. I

remember steering clear of the youngling centers...but still heard the unearthly screams as they were cut down

and left there on the spot. At one point a commander in front of me actually dared to try and intimidate a

padawan, a wee girl just getting started. Her master was dead a few feet away, felled by a thermal detonator.

The captain stepped on her neck and watched her writhe in agony, tears streaming down her face. As I

watched, her eyes locked on my visor, and I could feel her terror and pain course through my mind. With a growl

of rage I grabbed the clone by the helmet and flung him away from her. Being a special batch deemed to be

specialized heavy troopers I was stronger and larger than most of my brothers by several feet. He sailed a few

feet and landed with a heavy oomph, I turned to the girl and picked her up. With all the chaos and Jedi killing

clones, no-one noticed as I ran to the balcony, squeezed her trembling frame and let her drop to the balustrade

a couple feet below. Satisfied as she looked up at me, nodded with a grateful smile and took off, I picked up my

chain gun and ran into battle once again. All in all, the massacre lasted around four hours with heavy resistance

from the Jedi, as expected. When the death tolls were in, 65 Jedi and 145 troopers were reported dead. As a

side note, Darth Vader joined the battle to briefly kill a master and retrieve a holocron, then leave with a cold

breeze lingering...As I sit here on one of the many fallen stone columns that once represented the beauty and

grace of the Jedi, I realize things from here on in will be much, much more different...and strangely...I find myself worried about the Jedi more than my brothers at the moment.

Especially that one girl, so small...such a pretty, orange-skinned Togruta should never have to face that terror and death.

All I can hope for is we all survive this mess...one way or another.


End file.
